After the completion of our first outdoor boil, we then moved to an inside boil to refine the syrup to its final, sellable state. The inside boil process is quite simple, and much less time consuming then the outdoor boil. The process began with boiling the syrup in 4 large buckets on hot plates in our lab until we reached the right sugar content, which is around 67%. We measure this using a neat piece of equipment called a refractometer.

Once the syrup has the right sugar content, we filter it several times to ensure that there is nothing left in it except beautiful, delicious syrup! Next comes the bottling process, which I always find to be a very rewarding experience, as there is something fulfilling about seeing how much all the hard work we have put into this process pays off. We ended up bottling a little over 12 gallons from this boil! That is a record breaking amount of syrup for one boil, and I think its safe to say we all feel proud of all the work we put in. Our next boil starts soon, and we are looking forward to making even more syrup, so stay tuned for updates!